Transaction devices are portable items that store data, such as credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, access cards, and cards for various prepaid services or goods. Magnetically encoded transaction devices typically store data in a magnetic strip. A transaction device can be a transit card that is issued by a transit authority, such as a subway system. A transit card may store value that is used to make automatic payments at, for example, subway station fare gates, thereby providing access to restricted areas.
A transit card may be a “proximity read” transit card, which may communicate with a card reader without physically contacting the card reader. Communication between a proximity read transit card and various types of card readers may occur via a radio frequency signal, optical signal, wireless internet connection, infra-red communication, or other communication method known in the art or hereafter developed. As a user of a transit card passes through a fare gate, a card reader may cause value to be automatically deducted from value stored on the transit card.
The fare gate can determine whether the balance of the value remaining on the transit card is below a threshold amount. The threshold amount might be set, for example, to an average fare cost of a typical or average trip. If the value is below the threshold, the fare gate can verify whether a predetermined payment source, such as a credit card, has been provided to pay for increasing the value stored on the transit card. If a predetermined payment source has been provided, the fare gate can provide access through the fare gate to the user of the transit card, and charge the predetermined payment source and transfer funds to “top up” the value on the transit card by increasing the value stored on the transit card by a specified amount.
The fare gate has time to verify whether the transit card is a type of transit card that can have its balance increased by the fare gate. However, the fare gate does not have time to verify whether a predetermined payment source has sufficient balance or credit to provide for the balance increase on the transit card. The fare gate may send requests to verify whether predetermined payment sources have sufficient balance to the transit authority's data processing system. The transit authority's data processing system may batch these requests for verification at a later time when data processing systems are less congested, such as after midnight. If the predetermined payment source for a transit card has exceeded its credit limit, the transit authority's data processing system may not verify this insufficient balance until after midnight, which can result in the fare gates continuing to allow access to the user of the transit card for the rest of the day. The transit authority may not be able to subsequently collect for many of these prematurely approved balance increases, which may cost the transit authority significant amounts in lost revenue.